


Messed Up

by LibraryMage



Series: Break Your Chains [5]
Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Character, Autistic Ezra Bridger, Autistic Sabine Wren, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-09 16:22:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11672742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LibraryMage/pseuds/LibraryMage
Summary: Ezra and Sabine both can't sleep and pass the time until morning together by talking about their messed up pasts.(warning for references to past child abuse and an abuse victim downplaying their abuse)





	Messed Up

It looked like it was going to be another sleepless night for Ezra.  He pressed his hands over his still-open eyes, stifling a frustrated groan, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered.  Zeb was one of the heaviest sleepers Ezra had ever met.  He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, holding it, and letting it out slowly.  But the harder he tried to fall asleep, the more difficult it was.  Finally, he accepted defeat and gave up, resigning himself to another night of staring blankly at the ceiling, waiting until the rest of the crew woke up.

Seconds dragged by, feeling like hours, and with each of those seconds, Ezra felt more and more like something was crawling under his skin, like an itch or an impulse.  He sat up with the abruptness of a twig snapping, swinging his legs over the side of the bunk and dropping quietly to the ground.  He crept out of the room, moving quietly down the hallway.  At the very least, he could get outside and breathe in the fresh air of Lothal.  Maybe that would get some of the restlessness out of his system.

He exited the ship through the airlock, figuring it was quieter than the main hatch.  As soon as the door slid shut behind him, he heard a voice to his left ask “Couldn’t sleep?”

Ezra jumped.  He hadn’t realized anyone else would be out there.  He turned to see Sabine sitting cross-legged on the ground, leaning back against the ship’s hull.

“Sorry,” she said.  “Thought you would’ve seen me or sensed me or something.”

“Wasn’t paying attention,” he said.  “I figured everyone else was asleep.”

“If you need to go be alone, I get it,” Sabine said.  “But if you want company…” she let the sentence trail off, glancing at a spot on the ground beside her, inviting him to stay.

Ezra sat down next to her, actually glad for a chance not to be alone with his thoughts.

“You haven’t been sleeping a lot,” she said.  It wasn’t a question.  Ezra shrugged.

“I’m fine,” he said.  “The past few nights have just been --”

“Rough?” Sabine asked.  Ezra nodded.  “I know the feeling,” Sabine said.

“I know,” Ezra said.  “I mean, Kanan said --” Ezra stopped when he saw Sabine’s jaw clench a little.  “He didn’t tell me anything,” Ezra said.  “He was just trying to -- never mind.  Forget I said anything.”

“I just meant I started having a lot of bad dreams when I first got here,” Sabine said.  “Still do, I guess, just not as much.”

The two of them sat in silence for a moment, each of them staring at the ground, Sabine’s hands twisting around each other, her fingers locking together as she bent them at odd angles.  Anxiety gnawed at Ezra’s stomach.  Things still didn’t feel quite _right_ between him and Sabine.  They worked just fine together on ops, and when they _had_ to interact beyond that, they got along okay.  But for the most part, they tended to steer clear of each other by unspoken mutual agreement.  Ezra knew it was because of him.  The first time they’d laid eyes on each other, he’d attacked a member of her team, and she didn’t strike him as the kind of person who let things like that go easily.  Not that she should.

“You want to talk about it?” Sabine asked abruptly, her voice cutting through the mildly-uncomfortable silence.  “It helps me sometimes.”

“It’s nothing,” Ezra said, almost automatically.

“If it was nothing, neither of us would be out here, would we?”

“Guess not.”

Ezra looked down again, letting one hand drop to the ground and scratch lightly at the dirt.

“I just keep having these dreams about Maul,” Ezra said, the words tumbling out almost on their own.  “About him finding us and --” he didn’t want to tell her what happened in those dreams, how Maul slaughtered the entire crew in front of Ezra’s eyes while he was powerless to stop it.  He couldn’t tell her.  It made it too real.  “And about things that happened when I was a kid.”

He didn’t have to worry about _that_ becoming too real.  It already was.

“He really messed you up, didn’t he?” Sabine said.  Ezra shifted uncomfortably.  It wasn’t like Sabine didn’t know how he’d ended up with the crew of the _Ghost_ , but he’d done his best to keep the worst of his fear and pain hidden from all of them, even Kanan, who he was slowly becoming more able to talk to.

“You don’t hide it as well as you think you do,” Sabine told him, as if she could tell what he was thinking.

Ezra drew his knees up to his chest like he was trying to shield himself from something.

“You have a family before him?” Sabine asked.  Ezra could feel the hint of morbid curiosity she was trying to suppress and the twinge of embarrassment it caused her.

“My parents,” he said.  “They died when I was a kid.”

“You remember them at all?”

Ezra nodded.  “I was seven when they were killed,” he said.  “Old enough that I remember a lot.  Not that he would’ve ever let me forget.”  The words slipped out before he even realized he was saying them.

“What do you mean?” Sabine asked, that curious thread back in her voice.

“He would use it to make me angry,” Ezra said, his arms tightening around his knees.  “Or to make me hurt.  He always said feeling like that made me stronger.”

As he said it, Ezra could feel that ghost of a hand gripping his arm, hear Maul’s voice in his ear, _don’t fight it, Ezra, let it fuel you, **this** is your power, now use it_ , as Ezra struggled to lift an impossibly heavy object with the power of his mind alone.

Sabine wasn’t saying anything.  Ezra started to wonder if he’d said too much and made her uncomfortable.

“You know that’s messed up, right?” she asked him.

“It worked,” Ezra said.

“Still.”

“What was your family like?” Ezra asked.  Sabine’s smile looked almost sarcastic.

“Listen, kid, if you’re just asking because you’ve been deprived of happy, normal family stuff, my family is _not_ the one you want to be asking about,” she said.

“I’m asking because I want to know,” Ezra said.  It was true, but he was also desperate to change the subject away from his past.  “Because we’re friends, I guess.  But if you don’t wanna tell me, that’s fine.”

“You guess?” Sabine asked.  Ezra couldn’t tell if she was actually offended or just playing at it.  Sabine sighed, her shoulders slumping a little.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “There’s not really much to tell.  I had my parents, my brother, and things were…okay.  Most of the time.”

Ezra didn’t say anything, not sure if he should ask her what she meant or just leave it.  But Sabine continued on her own.

“My mother was…I don’t really know how to describe her,” Sabine said, a bitter edge to her voice.  “But I don’t think she really understood me, and once she realized just how different I was from what she expected, she didn’t really wanna try.”  Ezra saw her hands twitch slightly, just starting to tap against her leg.  She locked her fingers together like she was trying to stop herself from moving them, then shook her head and let her hands go loose again.

“It wasn’t as bad, though,” she said.  “Not like…” her gaze left the ground and flitted toward him.

“Doesn’t sound like it was good,” Ezra said.

Sabine shrugged and Ezra decided to let it go.

“Kanan was right,” Sabine said, pushing past the awkward silence.  “Everyone on this ship is kind of messed up.  You don’t have to hide it.  I mean, if you don’t want to.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and her shoulders began to creep up.

“Sorry,” she muttered.  “I’m bad at this.”

“So am I,” Ezra pointed out.

“Yeah, I guess you would be, wouldn’t you?” Sabine said.  “Considering.”  She winced.  “Sorry,” she said again.  “That was --”

Ezra was already shaking his head.  “No,” he said.  “You’re right.  You’re absolutely right.”

The silence that fell between them was a lot more comfortable than the previous ones had been.  The night sky above them was just starting to turn a lighter shade of blue when Sabine spoke.

“Ezra?” she said.  “We _are_ friends.  Just so you know.  At least, I think we are.”

Ezra shrank in on himself, inexplicably embarrassed by the words he was about to say.

“I think so, too.”


End file.
